SHORT ANSWER
Yes, and I would rather let our customers make that case than make it myself. Every week I read the reviews and stories that come in from families who have actually moved their pets to Portugal with us, and the same themes show up again and again: relief that someone else was managing the paperwork, gratitude for real-time updates during a long flight, and more than a few stories about a coordinator solving a problem the family did not even know they had. One reviewer called it "well worth the cost to have the peace of mind that professionals are taking care of everything." Another told us our team rebooked their kitties' flight overnight during an airline strike, days before the cats were set to travel, without the family having to lift a finger. That is the kind of thing that is hard to plan for on your own, and it is exactly why people choose to hire us instead of managing a Portugal move solo.
I do not think a company should just tell people it is good. I think the better evidence is what happens when something goes wrong and a customer tells the story afterward. Here is a review from Laurie Lawson, who relocated her dog Maggie from the United States to Portugal: "We recently used Starwood Pet Travel to manage the logistics of relocating our pet from the US to Portugal. The Starwood team made it a seamless process and managed all aspects of our pet's journey in compliance with everchanging EU regulations. I highly recommend Starwood for your pet relocation needs!" (Google review via starwoodpet.com/locations/portugal).
That phrase, "everchanging EU regulations," is worth sitting with for a second. Portugal follows the EU's non-commercial pet travel rules, and those rules are genuinely subject to updates from year to year. Laurie did not have to track any of that herself. That is the actual product we sell: someone else absorbing the regulatory tracking so a pet owner does not have to.
The review that I come back to most often is from Ben Mellerup, who moved five cats, Rusty, Bella, Bruce, George, and Sadie, from Boston to Portugal. His full review is worth reading in his own words: "We could not have been more pleased with the service provided by Starwood and the wonderful people who work for them to transport our kitties from Boston to Portugal. Our furry family members were well cared for and we received many updates with pictures and video all along their travel. Special shout out to Cassidy Ryan who had to navigate a pilot and worker strike of the airline right at the last minute when our kitties were set to leave. She worked day and night to secure a flight so that they could move with us. She also had to navigate the fact that my wife and I had to leave 11 days prior to our kitties due to a medical condition that prevents flying, so we had to take a transatlantic ship. She worked with us and our daughter, who stayed with our babies and delivered them to Boston, and was in contact with us daily with check ins and dealing with the flight issues from the strike. We highly recommend Starwood for anyone needing to transport their furry family members. The people who work for them are amazing." (Google review via starwoodpet.com/locations/portugal).
I want to be honest about why I like sharing this particular story. It is not a smooth, uneventful trip. It involves an airline strike, a family that had to split their own travel from their pets' travel due to a medical condition, and five cats instead of one. Nobody can predict an airline strike. What a family can control is who they have in their corner when one happens. Ben's family had a coordinator working nights to protect their travel dates instead of finding out about the disruption from a gate agent.
As I tell people directly when they ask me whether hiring Starwood is worth it for a Portugal move, "the reviews that stick with me are never the routine ones. They're the ones where something outside anyone's control went sideways, and our coordinator's job was to absorb that stress so the family didn't have to. That is what you are actually paying for. Not paperwork. A person who does not let a strike or a medical emergency become your pet's problem."
Not every testimonial involves a crisis. A lot of what shows up in our reviews is simpler than that. Allyson Dykhuizen, who moved her dogs Royal Tenenbaum, Roosevelt, and Lord Bullington to Portugal, put it plainly: it was "WELL worth the cost to have the peace of mind that professionals are taking care of everything," especially since an international move already demands so much attention elsewhere (starwoodpet.com/locations/portugal). That is a common thread across the reviews I read. Moving your whole life to another country is already a full-time job for a few months. Handing off one major, high-stakes piece of it, safely getting your pet there, frees up bandwidth for everything else on your plate, from visas to housing to school enrollment.
We also try to make sure that peace of mind is not just a feeling but something backed by an actual system. Every pet family gets updates during travel rather than radio silence between drop-off and arrival, which is part of why the "updates with pictures and video" detail shows up in review after review. When your pet cannot tell you how the trip is going, someone else should.
I do not think every pet owner moving to Portugal needs to hire a relocation company, and I would rather say that plainly than oversell what we do. If you have one small, healthy, young pet, a flexible timeline, and you are comfortable managing a multi-month paperwork process yourself, plenty of people do that successfully. What tends to change the equation, based on the stories our own customers share, is exactly what shows up in Ben Mellerup's review: multiple pets traveling together, a medical situation that complicates your own travel plans, or the simple bad luck of an airline disruption landing right before your departure date. Those are the moments where having a coordinator already assigned to your move, rather than scrambling to find help after something breaks, makes the difference between a manageable delay and a real crisis.
It is also fair to look at what happens on the other side, when families handle a Portugal move without professional help. On r/PortugalExpats, one owner planning a move from the US described discovering that their dog's weight plus crate exceeded their airline's checked baggage limit, forcing them into cargo shipping quotes around $4,500, well above their moving budget, and leaving them asking Reddit strangers for "trustworthy pet shipping companies" with limited time left before their move (r/PortugalExpats). That is the kind of surprise a coordinator is meant to catch early, well before it becomes a budget crisis close to departure.
If you want more than a star rating, we keep full customer stories on our site, including Maggie's trip from Seattle through Frankfurt to Porto, written from her own perspective as a dog discovering a new country one cobblestone street at a time (Maggie's Trip to Portugal). We publish these because a five-star rating tells you people were satisfied, but a full story tells you what their move actually involved, which is usually more useful when you are deciding whether a service like ours fits your own situation.
If any of these stories sound like your situation, whether that is multiple pets, a tight timeline, a medical complication, or simply wanting one less thing to manage during an international move, the best next step is requesting a free quote so we can walk through what your specific move would look like. If you have questions before that, you can reach our team directly through our contact page, and our Portugal relocation page has the full collection of testimonials and stories referenced here, along with more detail on the routes we handle regularly.